07-07-2013, 06:17 PM
MonikaT, the test to which you linked is very intriguing, but having run through it, I note that most of the sections are spectrum tests in which males and females may tend to different intermediate parts of the spectrum. In my own case, I ‘froze’ on the word test, in which I would have expected to make quite a high score (I tend to act as my wife’s thesaurus), and I probably fouled up the ‘faces’ test, in which I tended to prefer the images I felt were less 'Photoshopped'. On the other hand, and according to the explanations with the test, my low testosterone might tend to bias my scores towards the female end of the spectrum. In fact I ended up slightly on the male side of centre.
That said, I am uncertain as to the relevance of this type of test to actual gender orientation, to which I believe my wife may have been really referring. While such orientation seems generally supposed to be determined during fetal development and thus innate, I really made my post with a view to leading into the question of environmental interaction with gender orientation. I sometimes wonder what my situation might be if I had been born forty or fifty years later. During my youth, transition was not only a practical impossibility, it was something that was not on the radar even as an idea. To an extent I was lucky because I only recently began to understand the nature of my problems, and my dysphoria was not so severe that it could not be submerged or sublimated for much of the time by absorbing preoccupations of one sort or another, and less successfully until recently by trying to find things that made me feel female to some extent. By the time that transition might have become an option, it was no longer a practical possibility because my relationship with my wife had become an overriding consideration. I’ve been intending to post something on the subject of environmental factors, particularly during upbringing, since I believe that both I and my wife have been influenced, but have had difficulty in organising my thoughts. I am glad that JustEmily has to some extent preempted me in raising the issue - 'more nurture than nature'.
I would be very interested in any comments on how those here feel that their nurture or life experiences or preoccupations have interacted with their gender orientation.
That said, I am uncertain as to the relevance of this type of test to actual gender orientation, to which I believe my wife may have been really referring. While such orientation seems generally supposed to be determined during fetal development and thus innate, I really made my post with a view to leading into the question of environmental interaction with gender orientation. I sometimes wonder what my situation might be if I had been born forty or fifty years later. During my youth, transition was not only a practical impossibility, it was something that was not on the radar even as an idea. To an extent I was lucky because I only recently began to understand the nature of my problems, and my dysphoria was not so severe that it could not be submerged or sublimated for much of the time by absorbing preoccupations of one sort or another, and less successfully until recently by trying to find things that made me feel female to some extent. By the time that transition might have become an option, it was no longer a practical possibility because my relationship with my wife had become an overriding consideration. I’ve been intending to post something on the subject of environmental factors, particularly during upbringing, since I believe that both I and my wife have been influenced, but have had difficulty in organising my thoughts. I am glad that JustEmily has to some extent preempted me in raising the issue - 'more nurture than nature'.
I would be very interested in any comments on how those here feel that their nurture or life experiences or preoccupations have interacted with their gender orientation.